"Not everyone in the world is troubled by this problem, and our task is to diminish it, and not make it a central topic."

No kidding. Don't people understand that this is precisely what the Israelis have been doing for the past year? By mitigating the conflict, the mainstream media in the United States and elsewhere will neglect to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with full force; thereby playing right into the hands of the Israeli Government. If the press is reluctant to expose Israeli actions towards the Palestinians- actions that include the expansion of settlements on occupied land- what initiative does the international community have in solving the dispute? With the Israeli-Palestinian story tamed in the newspapers and on television screens, people around the globe will eventually forget about the problem. In fact, without press coverage, it is hard to believe that world leaders would pressure the Israelis to compromise. They simply have no incentive to do so.

Congratulations to Lieberman for being so sincere. The same cannot be said for P.M. Netanyahu or his Likud Party. But this sincerity has come with a price. The true nature of Israel's attitude has now been publicized; attitudes that are nothing short of arrogant and dispassionate.

http://depetris.wordpress.com

This is America's fault -- why do we keep giving chocolate to "mini-me" when mini-me is pooping all over us?

Stop funding these militant fascist Apartheid fanatcis, and it will take care of >80% of our terrorism problem.

You think calling Likudniks fascist is too much, well take a look where Nazism is raising its head -- quite ironic: (from CNN)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/12/21/israel.organs/index.html

And of course any post my me would be incomplete without linking to my favourite youtube video of my favourite UK member of Parliament:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMGuYjt6CP8

Long live Sir Gerald Kaufman!

The entire Israeli government has been clear that they chose this settlement freeze reluctantly. That's because its painful and frustrating. But peace is about making painful and frustrating compromises.

The Netanyahu government has gone further than any recent Israeli administration in limiting Israel's activity in the occupied territories. It is being widely resisted by extremist segments of the Israeli population, and even peace-minded Israelis are questioning why the government is making concessions without receiving anything in return.

Which leads to the much more important question-- why haven't the Palestinians come to the table to resume talks?

Obama wants talks, Netanyahu wants talks. Israel has filled every necessary "precondition" for talks that even it did not want to fill. Arguably, this would be the biggest opportunity for a peace deal which creates a Palestinian state at least since 2000.

Palestinians cannot afford to pass this opportunity up.

And derisive posts like this-- which mock the painful concessions Israelis are preparing themselves to make-- do not help.

Yes, Lieberman is right; does anyone care about the plight of the Palestinians any more?

Well, the Muslim world does (kind-of). The governments of many Muslim nations (especially the Arab ones) pay lip service to the Palestinians but never actually raise a finger to do anything concrete to help them. Most of what they do is rail at the Israelis to distract their own citizens from the dismal government the regimes provide to their own people.

"Old-Europe" cares; that is the British, French, Spanish and Scandinavians do. The Italians not so much and the Germans are beholden to the Israelis for murdering six million of their co-religionists so despite their inclinations, the German support for Palestinian aspirations will never be more than rhetorical.

"New Europe" on the other hand couldn't care less about the Palestinians. The Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, and Hungarians are all allied with Israel and indifferent to Palestinian aspirations. Anyone bother to follow what the Serbs think of the Palestinians or the Croats? What about the Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians; do any of these newly free Europeans have any sympathy for Palestinian national dreams? Nope.

And speaking about the former Soviet Republics, exactly how much do the Russians care about whether Israel continues to build settlements? Last time Avigdor Lieberman was in Russia this is what Putin had to say about him,

“It is gratifying to realize that people who know more than hearsay about this country are appointed to such high posts in Israel,” (New York Times, June 13, 2009, “Israel’s Foreign Minister Cozies Up to Moscow, Clifford J. Levy).

What about the budding new superpowers, China and India? Do the Chinese have any sympathy for the Palestinians or antipathy to Israel's settlement policy? Not a bit. When China sees Palestinians complaining, they think of Tibetans complaining. When China sees restive Muslims in Palestine they think about their restive Uighurs in Xinjiang.

As for the Indians; they have increasingly close ties not only to the IDF but also to the Mossad. Military cooperation between India and Israel is increasingly rapidly. In fact, India recently allowed Israel to test fire a long range missile capable of carrying nuclear war heads off its coast in the Indian Ocean. As for the Indian's sympathies in the Israel-Palestine dispute, who do they sympathize more with; the rapidly developing and technologically sophisticated Israelis or Palestinian groups like Hamas who are so reminiscent of the Muslim terrorist groups that threaten India?

The idea of increasing isolation of Israel is a myth that only the gullible fall for. It's the Palestinians who are more isolated than ever. In fact, the only powerful player in the world who actually cares about their plight is Barack Obama. If the Palestinians don't make a deal on Obama's watch their national aspirations are probably finished. If they don't surrender to reality, self-contained "Bantustans" is the best they will ever get and more likely their current ambiguous status will continue for another generation or two.

The Israeli Foreign Minister is right, Palestinian prospects look bleaker every day. And all the talk about Israel’s settlements is limited to newspapers in the Arab world, the United States and a few countries in Europe. Yes, international forums with a lot of representation from Muslim Governments can criticize Israel; in reality this criticism is inconsequential.

Friends of the Palestinians would be wise to help them acquiesce to this reality before it’s too late for them.

There’s one thing Lieberman forgot to mention. Nine months from now when the settlement freeze is up, does anyone think Obama will be pressuring Israel to extend it? The settlement freeze expires in September, 2010.

How close is that to the U.S. mid term elections?

From Uri Avnery's latest column
In all the long Oslo speech, Obama devoted 16 whole words to us: “We see it in Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden.”

Well, first of all, it is not a conflict between Arabs and Jews. It is between Palestinians and Israelis. That is an important difference: when one wants to solve a problem, one must first have a clear picture of it.

More importantly: This is the remark of a bystander. A viewer sitting in his armchair and looking at the TV screen. A theater critic reviewing a performance. Should the President of the United States look at the conflict like this?

If the conflict is indeed hardening, the US, and Obama personally, must carry much of the blame. His folding up on the settlement issue and his total surrender to the pro-Israel lobby in the US has encouraged our government to believe that it can do anything it likes.

It's always so interesting to see just what Professor Walt thinks is worth writing about. In this post, he writes about an article he read about Foreign Minister Lieberman in last weeks Jerusalem Post.

So far we haven't seen anything from the Professor about an interesting little article in today's Jerusalem Post. In case he hasn't seen it, here's what the Jerusalem Post is reporting on today; apparently Fatah has ordered a new intifada to be directed against Hamas and Hamas has retaliated by ordering a new intifada against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The article is entitled "Fatah Cracks Down on Hamas Officials" and it is authored by Khaled Abu Toameh. Here are the relevant quotes:

*As the "forum of seven" Israeli cabinet ministers continued their deliberations in Jerusalem about the release of prisoners whom Hamas was demanding in return for St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit, Azzam al-Ahmed, a Fatah official and close aide to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, called for an "intifada" against the Islamist movement in Gaza.*

Not to be out done, the Jerusalem Post reports that this is how Hamas responded,

*Hamas responded by calling for an "intifada" against the PA in the West Bank. Yahya Musa, a top Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, urged Palestinians to launch a popular intifada against the PA because of the suffering of the Palestinians in the West Bank as a result of the actions of its security forces that operate under the supervision of the CIA.*

It's really quite interesting how enthusiastic Professor Walt is to enlighten his loyal readers about Israel’s settlement policies while at the same time he's so reticent to comment about the Palestinian Civil War.

It's hard to know how he (or anyone else) expects Israel to negotiate a peace deal with the two main Palestinian political parties who hate each other almost as much as they hate the Israelis.

Given the dismal state of the Palestinian political landscape why should the Israelis believe that a new Palestinian nation on their door step will be any more cohesive or peaceful than Somalia?

Some words of wisdom from Professor Walt about this would be far more edifying than the tired old sarcastic comments about Israel and the settlements.

This will solve everything. It really can be done. You may say it's extraordinary to shut a country down , but its very inception was extraordinary. An extraordinary problem usually requires an extraordinary solution.

It should be done by imposing sanctions and taxes on it, until it agrees to hold a referendum in all the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean, where every person over 18 shall be asked how he thinks this land should be governed.

Presumably very many Jews will leave up to and immediately after such a referendum, and that would be a good thing, and in itself insure that the desired Arab majority will happen sooner. An international force shall make sure that Israel is closed down in an orderly fashion, and that no harm is done to the departing Jews, and The United States should grant asylum to the Jews, living up to its major responsibility that Israel came into being in the first place. At the same time this force will see to that no infrastructure is destroyed upon departure, because such behavior is unacceptable in the civilized world, and because the infrastructure will serve as compensation to the Palestinians for their forceful expulsion in 1948 and 1967.

Then the world will have got rid of the greatest security peril in all of human history, with the most costly and detrimental effects. World stability is more important than the self-determination of a minority.

This makes a comment I made recently on this blog particularly apropos. It also makes one wonder: Did Walt really believe anything else was going to happen? This freeze is an attempt to get negotiations started, not a change in Israel's policy. That was pretty obvious to me, but then again, I'm no "realist" ;-).

It has always seemed to me that it would be best for the Palestinians if they negotiated borders sooner rather than later, thereby reserving the land that is to be theirs as theirs.

As a "realist", you should realize the obvious - Israel will keep building and all of the one-state predictions won't come true because Israel will never allow it. The Palestinians will eventually be squeezed into some kind of federation with Jordan on a fraction of the land they could have gotten at Annapolis.

The Palestinian strategy of eschewing negotiations in the hope that the world will put pressure on Israel to unilaterally concede what should be negotiated is a big gamble and one which they will likely lose.

This is actually the title of the paper written by Steven J. Rosen for the Middle East Forum, in which he claims that, Mr. Netanyahu has already agreed unofficially, with Mr. george Mitchell on the terms of reference for final status negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

What remains now, it seems for Mr. Mitchell to bring Mr. Abbas back to the table of negotiations.
khairi janbek.paris/france